My good friend Keith has a cultural antenna to rival Jodrell Bank it was he who alerted me to the Rack Records label launch at Bristol’s Cube Cinema on Thursday. It was an evening set up by label founders Steve Davis and Gaz Williams to celebrate their love of modular synths (‘mods’) and bring together some of the finest exponents of sonic manipulation around today.
Rack Records takes its name from the way you can build up banks of modules to control sound, often mounted in metal racks. This is less about the keyboard wielding prowess of people like Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman or Brian Eno and more around patching modules together that are often hand-built or bespoke. This Wikipedia entry explains it well, “Modular synthesisers are composed of separate modules for different functions. The modules can be connected together by the user to create a patch. The outputs from the modules may include audio signals, analog control voltages, or digital signals for logic or timing conditions. Typical modules are voltage-controlled oscillators, voltage-controlled filters, voltage-controlled amplifiers and envelope generators.”
Steve Davis and Gaz Williams set the scene in front of the Cubes closed cinema curtains and explained that like most of the modding-world their love of modular synths was obsessive. The objective of the show was to put modders together in “spontaneous electronic conversations”; two improvised sessions with an interval with two performers playing at any one time for 15 or 30 minutes before being tagged out by the next performer. Before the hi-tech could start there was a far more low-tech bingo draw to decide the order, then the curtains were pulled back to reveal the artist’s rigs. The stage was awash with kit of all shapes and sizes with wires protruding from every surface interspersed with LED lights of all sizes blinking and glowing. It’s like someone had attempted to build NASA’s mission control in their shed.
Set one featured Nina Richards who not only plays but also builds her own mods, Ben Chilton (lifeisfeedback), John Doran, co-founder of The Quietus and Robin Vincent.
Set two featured Misster Spoon, Mike Bourne (Founder member of Teeth Of The Sea), Gaz Williams (bass player for acts such as Marc Almond, Carl Baràt, and Charlotte Church) and Steve Davis.
Photographs courtesy of Nathan Parton (Instagram @njparton)
Both sets grew from subtle electronic shifts, tentative beats and pulses which slowly built in confidence as the as the performers found their feet and started to explore. The artists were all business, with heads down focusing on their patches, knobs, and dials. Some gently rocked while they coaxed sound from their equipment to create lightning in a bottle. Ben Chilton was the most physically expressive as he grabbed a microphone to transmogrify his voice or used a light wand to splash electronic sparks into the mix. Both halves were also aided by hypnotic projected visuals and lasers.
These mods and rackers are expert sound shapers who practice the dark art of contorting electricity into loops, blips, bleeps, pulses, whoops, whomps and keening arpeggios, with everyone feeding off each other in a happy electronic union all in pursuit of the sweet spot where on-the-fly-compositions achieve brilliance. Considering this was completely improvised the cohesion was extraordinary and by the time everyone was on stage at the end there were smiles as wide as the Clifton Suspension Bridge on performers and audience alike. I hope this was the first of many such nights. In mod we trust.
Rack Records is a label worth watching. Both sets are available on their Bandcamp page and you can name your own price.
Rack Records: Bandcamp | Instagram | Linktree
Review by Paul F Cook and huge thanks to Nathan Parton for allowing us to use his photographs.
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